The comparison with Brain Training is inevitable, but the two games are like chalk and cheese; where one takes itself a little seriously, the other is a more light-hearted affair. Here the presentation is really colourful and sugar coated, with cutesy characters and zany animation; it’s far less sombre than its sibling game. If Brain Training is a school maths class, then Big Brain Academy is most certainly break time.

There is no clever doctor watching the proceedings in this title, instead a novelty condom man with one arm takes charge, giving a brain workout over five different categories: Identify, Think, Memorise, Compute and Analyse. Within each of these lie three mini-games available to play at three difficult levels: the highest of these presents a tough challenge in many of the games, whereas the easy mode is accessible to even those with low wattage bulbs.

Everything in Big Brain Academy is available from the offset, which is great because there is far more choice of stuff to do. Disappointingly though, there are no hidden extras to unlock for good performances, but it’s not something that’s going to stifle longevity.

A good amount of variation is present in the available mini-games; some are more basic affairs, whereas others are head-scratchingly good. The flash memory task has the player tapping out increasingly long number sequences on a calculator-type keypad. The “coin-parrison” game displays a random value of coins in two separate windows, making the player decide which has the highest monetary value. It gets very furious in the last few seconds, trying to squeeze in just a couple more correct answers to boost the final score.

Each challenge starts off at a very easy level and as the timer ticks down gets progressively harder. When the alarm finally sounds, the effort is graded on brain weight: the higher the weight, the bigger the brain, and the better the medal reward is, from bronze to platinum.

As there are limited game modes, it’s likely most game time will be spent in the practice area, training in the different challenges. When these have been mastered, or at least have been improved in, the player's newly formed neural pathways can be tested. Taking one mini-game from each of the five categories, the results are totalled up and a rating given based on the overall performance. In a seemingly meaningless gesture, this measurement is based on career, mostly; caveman, lawyer, doctor – it’s very bizarre.

Unlike with Brain Training there is no clever handwriting or voice recognition, but this does mean it’s far less likely to get bad input from poor penmanship or broad local accents, thus removing the outside factor and concentrating on pure brain power.

Perhaps the biggest omission in the game is the lack of historical data. There’s no tracking of progress through the game, making it far trickier to work out if any improvements are being made. A spider diagram indicates the player’s ability across the different categories at that moment, growing in area as skill increases, which is a small compensation.

Big Brain Academy is a lot of fun, but its ability to improve brain power is probably a little more contrived than with Brain Training. It clearly sits in the “let’s just play” category, and as it takes itself less seriously, it’s that little bit more accessible (not that either have a difficulty turn off). As a pick-up-and-play game, it works well and is certainly worth considering alongside, rather than instead of, Brain Training.